The telephone game is a popular children's activity. One person starts with a whispered phrase and it passes from person to person around a circle. To no one's surprise, the phrase ends up sounding nothing like the original.

The telephone game is simply an insufficient way to get results in the workplace.It keeps your greatest talents stuck in first level details. They get locked down in lower level labor, when they could be acting on their full potential. Furthermore, the telephone game breeds diversity in practice so the organization gets inconsistent results.

To eliminate the telephone game, an organization must decide on a consistent process and communicate directly to the whole.

A good example is found in claim denials. They are perpetual and therefore most susceptible to the telephone game. Denials force a complete organizational reset every day. Individuals get consumed with the tasks and cannot grow... and consequently cannot advance company processes.

Let's start playing the consistency game. If everyone writes down what they know, how they found out, and shares it to the whole as a collective resource, it will survive full circle in perpetuity. The group evolves with the consistency game, and change to the system is driven by debatable evidence from researched resources. Now we're talking!